So, the question for the week, since the rankings
started up this week, is, "Are there February teams?" Are there teams that
consistently do better in the early part of the season than they do overall?
The good news is that this one's fairly easy to answer. For starters, here
are a couple of lists -- the top 25 (in ISR, or course) over the last five
years, for January and February and for the whole season:

There's nothing deep in that list, although Baylor in particular seems to
have done better early on than their quite respectable performance through
the rest of the year. Only teams which played at least 25 games in
February over the 5 years are listed.

If you look at the whole list, the biggest changes are in the teams who
don't meet that 25-game qualification, and that appears to just be a matter
of sample-size randomness; when you only play a series a year, your results
are a bit skewed. Of the qualifiers, here are the teams that have
decreased the most and increased the most from February to the full year:

The patterns here appear to be largely weather-based and do, to some
extent, support the contention of the Northern teams that scheduling issues
hurt them. Minnesota, for example, has been 10-23 and the #126 team in the
country in February; they've 159-89 the rest of the year and finished at
#59 overall.

Pitch Count Watch

Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher
usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a
standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel
free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you.
This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have
caught my eye -- the general threshold for listing is 120 actual pitches
or 130 estimated, although short rest will also get a pitcher listed if
I catch it. Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.